11.15.2007

In 1994 I was connecting to the internet with a 60MHz PowerMac 6100 (250MB Hard Drive baby!) on a blazing fast T1 while working at the Exploratorium. We had one of the fastest web connections on the planet. I'd use CU-SeeMe to do real-time video chat with students in London. Video chat across 5,371 miles?! This was Jetsons technology in real life!!

Meanwhile, web pages were white, text was black (Times New Roman of course), links were blue, and viewed links were purple.

If you did a webcrawler (this was before google, heck it was before AltaVista) search for Tori Amos, you'd get 4 hits, one of which linked to a page that even had PICTURES!

Meanwhile, back home on my 386, I was excited to upgrade to a 14,400 baud modem (up from 2400) to connect to my favorite Renegade BBS (Nation of Slime, in Berkeley), to play late night games of TradeWars.

What about you? What level of internet geekery had you achieved by 1994?

(Notice, parentheses implemented in this entry by a professional parentheses stunt driver on a closed blog. I am professionally trained in safely tangenting (is that a word?) my own stories. Do not attempt to use this many parentheses at home. Severe sentence fragmentation may result.)

1 comment:

I was all about the BRE (Barren Realms Elite, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barren_Realms_Elite). I would stay up late to use my turns before midnight, then re-dial the BBS, and use turns just after midnight, to attack tag team people.

I also did Cu-SeeMe on a Centris 650, and was AMAZED that I could see people live from so far away.

IRC was also pretty sweet with Homer, a Mac IRC app. Used to hang out in #MacWarez.